sea breeze, and fertilized by soft and seasonable rains. The principal object in settling this beautiful island, was for the of purpose supplying the China fleets with wood and water. The latter, which is of the most excellent quality, is conducted from the foot of the mountain, in pipes, to the wharf, where boats have their casks filled by a hose which leads from a cock into their bung holes. It is with regret I quit this most delightful spot, emulating in beauty and produce the seat of Paradise itself. p. 156.

The remainder of the volume is occupied with the adventures and observations at Macao and Canton, chiefly the latter, and it is very amusing. He was justly vexed at not being allowed to carry his operations of inspection and delineation within the proper city of Canton, but revenged himself upon the suburbs and vicinity. He confesses that his senses were overpowered and oppressed, sometimes to a painful degree, by the stupendous crowd and bustle, and the unrelenting, unremitting, and infinite din and clatter of this vast city. ›

So busy a scene, I am persuaded, is not elsewhere to be seen in the world. The noise exceeded every thing I had ever heard. The deafening clangor of gongs of all sizes; the shrill discordant music, and the clatter of the Chinese language on every side, assailed my nerves so formidably, that my presence of mind, and fortitude, seemed at times ready to desert me

Nevertheless, he plunged every day amid the chaos, and no writer has given a more vivid description of its elements. His introduction to the houses of several Chinese of distinction, gave him a slight glimpse of their interior economy, and his inquiries met with every attention and assistance from the intelligent Englishmen resident at the city, among whom he names, with particular acknowledgements, Mr. Morrison, the missionary. The most amusing of his adventures was a double attempt, partly successful in the latter instance, to get into his sketchbook some of the graces and sublimities of a highly revered Chinese temple.

I was attend d by a young officer of the Amelia. After crossing a large court shaded by immense banian trees, we ascended a flight of steps which led to the door of the sacred edifice. The priests permitted us to enter. he idols were very large gures of bronze, fifteen or twenty feet high These divinities had nothing very sublime or awful in their appearance; on the contrary, they appeared to us Europeans filthy, disgusting, and abominable. They were adored, however, by a great number of prostrate devotees while we were present, and those had no sooner withdrawn than others pressed forward to supply their places; so that the worship seems to be continued all day. There were several monstrous idols; and altars were placed in diffevent parts of the temple, with priests officiating at them. These

reverend fathers did not pay much attention to cleanliness, for they wore "marvellous foul linen;" their polls were as closely shaven as any Bernardin monk, and their long robes shewed symptoms of their having been once white. They were polite enough; and, as a great favour, they took us to the sty, or temple of the holy pigs. These deities were well attended, and were certainly much cleaner than their priests. They were very large and fat; and some of them, we were informed, were thirty, and one forty years old. This last was an immense sow, of a very venerable appearance. Leaving the grunting gods, we returned to the large temple, where I prepared to take a drawing of its interior. This was no sooner perceived by the priests and the devotees, than such an outcry was raised, and such dismal yells and groans uttered, that we thought it necessary to effect our retreat as speedily as possible, not without receiving some insults from the sacred priests and their devout penitents.'

Notwithstanding the ill success of this adventure, I was determined to take some more favourable opportunity to explore the temples of Josse and the sacred Hogs.'

Accordingly, in the company of four gentlemen of the Factory, he made a second visit to this temple, which he describes as of vast extent.

Whether the priests knew some of those gentlemen, or that they were in a better humour than when I had the honour of visiting them before, they suffered me to draw some of the statues, altars, &c. with out much interruption. We again visited the holy habitations of the sty, and their more slovenly priests.'

This is immediately followed by a sentence which we cannot be absolutely certain whether it is intended we should understand as serious or ironical. If it were really meant seriously, we could only express ourselves surprised and ashamed, to see such an observation coupled with such a description; to see a respectable Englishman using any language that should but even affect to admit a question whether these hogs, and idols, and their respective sties, may not after all have something of the venerableness and sanctity of religion!

f Absurd, however,' he remarks, as these institutions appear to us, they should not be rashly condemned, or even ridiculed, without knowing the reasons which, perhaps, may be brought to explain them, by some of the intelligent and learned men, who not only countenance a mode of worship which to us appears so ridicu lous, but would lay down their lives rather than abjure it,' p. 195.

But there would be such a palpable abandonment of mere common sense in an admonition like this gravely delivered, that we are almost forced to take the sentence as a stroke of intended satire, only failing in the requisite dexterity of equi vocal phrase,

Mr. Wathen experienced so much civility from several of the Chinese gentry to whom he was introduced, and heard at the Factory so good an account of the Hong Merchants, that he is extremely reluctant to believe that great nation so passing roguish, as a multitude of the most authentic reporters have concurred in representing them; in the same manner as he strives, with an obstinate charity, against that condemnatory estimate of the Hindoo character, which is now so fast prevailing against the fables of its loveliness and innocence. It is in the temperament of our Author, as we have already noted, to behold things and men on the fairer side; and it might seem hard to impute it to want of judgement that, when the opinion is so benevolent a one, he should be satisfied to form it on a very transient and limited inspection.

But at whatever price we rate the integrity of the Chinese, we shall all agree that no language can go to excess in extolling that of the English, in all their transactions in the East; insomuch that we shall hardly deign the slightest civility of acknowledgement in return for the high compliment practically paid us by the Chinese in the remarkable fact, as stated by our Author, that well closed boxes of dollars, given in payments by the English, each box bearing on the outside a mark of the value contained, will very commonly return to Canton without having ever been opened, after having circulated in payments through a large extent of the empire. But how long can we believe it possible the Chinese will forbear to avail themselves of this our high reputation, to raise a little commodious, clandestine tax, by eliciting a few dollars per box, in spite of the dictates of Fo, and the incomparable moralizings of Confucius?

There is a commendable despatch in the narrative of the homeward voyage, in which St. Helena affords the principal subjects of description and delineation. The run from this island to the Lizard, a distance of above 5200 miles, was performed in fifty-six days; and the voyager salutes his native Jand with a pardonable excess of affectionate flattery; though it must be acknowledged that the ascription to its scenery of the superlative degree of sublimity, is quite the utmost excess that can be pardoned, by any stretch of the reader's patriotism and indulgence, when such terms are employed as to vaunt our middling eminences, ravines, and cascades, over the stupendous spectacles in South America.

For me,' he says, its variable climate, never bordering on extremes, its genial spring, warm summer, sober autumn, and frosty winter, have more charms than the ever-verdant, monotonous dress of Nature in the tropical climes. Its scenery too, the motive and object of all my wanderings, surpasses, in beauty, variety, and

sublimity, any to be found within the tropics, in India or America.' p. 228.

Mr. Wathen shews the most unaffected modesty in his pretensions as an author, or rather, he makes no pretensions at all, except to the merit of strict veracity. He considers his drawings as the more valuable part of his labours, and assures us the prints in this volume are faithful representations. The greatest part of them are good, and several, remarkably beautiful. The colouring of a great proportion of them has very considerable delicacy and effect. One or two, especially 'Camoens's Cave,' have been spoiled by the engraver and the colourer. Great excellence in point of perspective, appears to be a general quality of Mr. W.'s performances.

We will confess that, considering what a number of drawings were made by our Author in the course of this adventure, we are tempted to wish a different plan had been adopted, namely, that slight plain etchings had been made, in imitation of drawings not more than half finished. There might thus have been given, without failing of a faithful and effective representation of the form and expansion of the scenes and objects, a far greater number of his views at the same expense, and with much more certainty, to the inspector, of having the true effect of the drawings. It is, we repeat, the consideration of what a very small proportion of the productions of a pencil, which so particularly excels in general truth of sketching, we can have the benefit of by any other means, that has excited this wish; and we venture to express it in the way of suggestion respecting Mr. W.'s avowed design of giving to the public many more of his drawings, of various selection as to the locality of the subjects, if the present work shall competently succeed. We wish that design may be speedily effected; and, as the thing to be desired is, that the future work may be in the greatest proportion possible actually his work, we hope he will aim at giving a very great number of his masterly sketches, as an object very preferable to an elaborate finishing of the plates, and preferable beyond measure to the dubious improvement of colouring. This addition, besides its expensiveness, is very difficult, as applied to landscape, to be performed at all to the satisfaction of persons of taste; and it puts far out of our sight the genuine, original delineation traced on the spot, often without time for any such nice process as that of colouring, which therefore, if added, is done from memory. The colouring of the print interposes between us and that delineation what is of arbitrary and uncertain execution, liable to vary throughout all the impressions from each individual plate, per

formed by many hands, and necessarily very subordinate ones in the painting art, and often made a veil and protection to bad engraving, as it obviously discourages the care indispensa ble to the excellence of that primary operation. The mode we have thus presumed to suggest to our Author and artist, would allow him the additional very important advantage of a much larger size than the ordinary quarto.

We take our leave of him for the present, with most sincere good wishes for the success of every graphical work which may be the result of his interesting and indefatigable peregrinations.

Art. III. The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, founded on an Anatomical and Physiological Examination of the Nervous System in general, and on the Brain in particular; and indicating the Dispositions and Manifestations of the Mind. By J. G Spurzheim, M. D. 8vo. pp. 556. price 17. 10s. London. Baldwin and Co. 1815.

(Concluded from Page 335.)

THE fourth chapter of the treatise under review, presents to us the principal physiological arguments in defence of the doctrine of plurality in organs.' That which stands first in the list, is the circumstance of the faculty of attention becoming fatigued by one species of study, and renovated by changing the object.

'If the brain (says our Author) were a single organ performing all the functions of the mind, why should not the organ be more fatigued by this new form of study?'

This statement, however, seems to us to be a mere assumption of the question; for as we have already asserted the possibility and reasonableness of one set of nerves being endowed with two kinds of susceptibility, the one of which may be worn out, while the other preserves its original freshness, so may it be in reference to the brain,-the excitability may be exhausted by one species of stimulus, but open to, and ready for, another. For this principle we have indeed a sufficient number of facts to Touch; one which just now occurs to our recollection may suffice. A person engaged in a literary undertaking, the circumstances of which were such as to render it necessary for his attention to be preserved in uninterrupted exercise for thirty successive hours, adopted the expedient of taking tea, coffee, brandy, and opium, at regulated intervals, and by so doing, he effected much more than would have been accomplished by an equal